THE SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN: CONNECTING & CONVERSING WITH YOUR AUDIENCE COMMUNITY

Social media has exploded over the last 3 years, the scale of this phenomenon means no one can ignore it anymore. For example mid 2008 there were over 113 million blogs, 200 million active Facebook users & over 1.1 billion twitter messages. Today over 346 million read blogs and another 130 million watch YouTube videos, daily. But it is the time spent using social media that tell a more significant story. Facebook users logged 13.9 billion minutes on their site in April 09, MySpace 5 billion minutes and the new kid in town, Twitter logged 300 million minutes. According to a Nielsen study, total minutes spent on social networking sites has increased 83 percent year-over-year. Learn how to connect and be involved in this social revolution.

A two part event:

The three hour seminar will introduce you to the most successful online marketing case studies, promoting content, brands and events online and will demonstrate a range of community building techniques

The one day workshop will be intimate hands-on training in how to use a variety online social tools to connect to and grow audiences around ‘your’ niche areas, whether production, event, brand or service

Both days are suitable for creatives wanting to generate interest in their work, marketing departments needing to understand this new environment and any one wanting to understand, promote themselves and grow online communities

Aimed at anyone who wants to promote themselves, their product or creation into communities. This seminar led by Laurel Papworth looks at the latest techniques of marketing yourself online through engaging with online events, social networks and DIY social media and the workshop will examine case studies of successful producers and creators doing it for themselves.

A workshop looking at how to understand the new audiences, build traffic and loyalty that goes way beyond creating a Facebook group or uploading a trailer onto YouTube but looks at a multitude of techniques of engaging through online events, real time conversation, socializing content and personal or corporate brand building. Some of the key aspects of the Social Media Campaign to be explored are described by Laurel below from her blog

Create – or better yet, find – social media assets you didn’t know you already had. Powerpoint presentations from the shareholder meeting? Put ‘em up on slideshare. FAQ’s and Customer Service Tip sheets? Put them in a wiki or a blog post. That sort of thing. Don’t waste money on made-for-web ‘viral’ crap. It’s useful, not buzzy stuff that social media wants.

Discuss – any campaign you create that is not discussed in social networks, doesn’t exist.Make sure the tools for discussion exist, don’t lock it down with pre-moderation and pdfs.

Promote – use distribution, not content networks for promotion. That would be Facebook, Digg and the like (you can’t blog on those sites, they are not for Citizen Journalist, but for Citizen Editor). Better still, offer widgets for customer to customer promotion.

Measure, analyse, get your metrics. Which ones are meaningful? A top blogger blogging or a Facebook group discussing? Hits to your web page or increase in Technorati keywords?

By the end of this workshop participants will have had the opportunity to learn about:

The online ecology of social networks

Techniques to distribute your content as widely as possible to a global audience

Planning and staging a campaign which has maximum impact and reach

Building loyalty and community with an online audience

About Laurel Papworth

Led by Laurel Papworth who is a Power150 media blogger (global – AdNews) and in the top 3 media bloggers for Australia (B&T). She has been teaching for 20 years, mostly in the area of online communities and virtual communications. Laurel is the senior social media strategist in Australia, consulting to companies, not for profits and government departments in Australia, Asia and Middle East including:

The AFTRS Laboratory for Advanced Media Production, the first three years of residentials. Around 34 of the 61 projects that were developed over one intensive week to a pitch, flash by in 2 minutes.

These images are part of the original 15-20 minute presentation at the end of that week to commissioners, interested stakeholders and most importantly the mentors and each other. At the moment most are in further development, seven are in full production and five have been produced to audience.

‘Building a Social Network” Strategies, implementation and management of online communities.

Laurel takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the various features and functions of organic social networks and how to identify positive and negative aspects of existing services. She refers to how on entry the motto/tagline, tools and what the community are discussing should be clearly visible. Other critical components Laurel mentions are sustainability of identity, notification of what is public and private, peer appraisal and methodologies to build trust. She then goes on to explain the many and varied forms of synchronous and asynchronous communication and the types of interaction certain demographics prefer.

Explaining why many sites need to also clearly display premium vs free content she references the member life cycle of visitor, newcomer, registered, responder, leader and elder combined with the various leadership types goes to make a rich tapestry of how communities form and evolve. Laurel talks about the best ways to manage closely knit communities and associated swarm behaviour – how empowering structured small groups actually engenders trust and makes it self-contained and ready to grow itself. She ends with a very useful summary of all the key points and answers as few questions such as fake content, her favourite community and reiterates the three main types of social networks (depth of content, filter and straight communications).

Laurel Papworth is a consultant specialising in educating companies in how to maximise value from social networks, social media and web 2.0 technologies.

In the past she had lead roles in digitising Fairfax Newspapers and establishing Optus Convergent media and now Laurel lectures on marketing into social networks at the University of Sydney and advising clients such as Channel 10 (Australian Idol community) and Telecom New Zealand.

Laurel frequently presents on Web 2.0 technologies and how they can best be used at a business level including corporate blogging, RSS feeds, user documentation wikis and vibrant customer communities. Renowned blog here.

Marissa talks through her experiences of extending stories into online and other platforms looking specifically at her work on the enigmatic cross-media service created by Hoodlum for Emmerdale. She talks about call-to-actions, multiple entry points, point-of-view, story worlds, gameplay and trail heads as part of this experience creation for the audience. One technique she uses is thinking about how you want them to feel, their role and giving them ownership and a feeling of importance. Something overlooked in many cross-media services is actually giving them stuff to do and Marissa talks about the many and various activities the non-passive, participants in Emmerdale could take part in. There are still places for linear moments in these and more subversive ARG services as that is part of the reward if the players achieve significant progress. She wraps up by saying that the audience needs to know this exists so meticulous planning of the marketing is as important as the service itself.MP3 recording time 18:27 (6.4MB) Click to listen

A series of podcasts of short presentations given by mentors at the LAMP VII: Story of the Future at Couran Cove Eco Resort in December 2007.

Marissa has worked extensively in television, cross-platform entertainment and interactive advertising over the past 10 years as a writer, creative strategist and content producer on a diverse range of innovative, award-winning cross-media projects.

As a new media content producer and senior interactive writer for Australia’s first interactive television series produced by Hoodlum Active, Fat Cow Motel (ABC, Austar), Marissa was responsible for developing an immersive, cross-platform game and producing interactive content across web, iTV, email, mobile and dial-up channels that delivered unprecedented results for the ABC becoming the most visited TV website ever for ABC Online. Marissa also worked on an innovative pre-broadcast viral media campaign delivered via print, radio, email, SMS and web. Marissa won the inaugural Australian Writers’ Guild Interactive Media Award in 2005 for her work on Fat Cow Motel.

Marissa was also a scriptwriter on the AFI award-winning first series of the Foxtel drama series Love My Way (Southern Star), as well as the Australian-German co-production Blue Water High (Southern Star) and the SBSTV Mockumentary Series, S(truth).

Marissa’s recent work includes roles as Interactive Content Producer and co-writer for the Yahoo! 7 interactive drama series and game, PS Trixi produced by Hoodlum Active – a world-first 12 episode new media ‘event’ delivered across web, Instant Messenger, email, mobile and video platforms.

Most recently, Marissa worked as creative strategist, concept and gameplay designer for Emmerdale Online, a new interactive, cross-platform channel and narrative-based game produced by Hoodlum Active for the hugely popular UK television series, Emmerdale. Emmerdale Online has recently been nominated for several prestigous international awards including Best Drama in the MIPCOM Mobile, Internet and CrossMedia TV Awards, and Best TV online channel for the 2007 Pixel Awards.

Marissa is currently developing several of her own cross-platform projects as well as consulting for a range of clients including television programme producers and award winning interactive advertising agency Tribal DDB as a digital content developer and copywriter across campaigns for Volkswagen, NIKE, Gatorade and McDonalds, three of which were awarded Gold Medals at the prestigious Montruex International Advertising & Multimedia Festival in 2006 & 2007.

ABOUT LAMP PODCASTS

All LAMP podcasts are published through iTunes – click on the icon below if you have iTunes to subscribe now!

This podcast presentation produced and presented by Gary Hayes for LAMP @ AFTRS.

Jennifer discusses legacy technologies leading up to mobile phone 3rd generation services and draws up on staggering statistics that indicate a change toward mobile content delivery over PC content delivery. She illustrates the impact mobiles are making as the new delivery platform of choice; right now there are twice as many mobile phones in the world as internet connections, and SMS is the most heavily transferred data type in the world.
Jennifer introduces the concept of native mobile applications; applications that are mobile phone dependent, and identifies video as the ‘killer app’ for the mobile platform in 2008. In addition to defining user demographics by behaviour rather than age, Jennifer shows us how 3G social and geographic networking is already working in the real world, and offers tips on how to develop more user friendly mobile applications.

A series of podcasts of short presentations given by mentors at the LAMP VIII residential lab in Marysville, Victoria in February 2008.

All LAMP podcasts are published through iTunes – click on the icon below if you have iTunes to subscribe now!

JENNIFER WILSON – Principal, Lean Forward

Jennifer Wilson is the principal at Lean Forward, a company created to consult in the area of engaging consumer experience based on content or marketing concepts, mobile and online. Lean Forward will also be undertaking bespoke development in this area.

Prior to this, Jennifer was Head of Innovation for ninemsn. In this role, she investigated developments in engagement, interaction, social networking, user generated content and other new technologies and how these shape our online and mobile interactive futures. Jennifer conceived of new products and oversaw the development of some cutting edge new destinations.

Prior to this, Jennifer was Managing Director of HWW, content provider and developer of online and mobile sites under the yourTime™ banner; and builder of third-party content sites.

Jennifer is passionate about single, device-independent relationships with consumers; the power and influence of social networks; and ‘soft’ personalisation –providing a tailored, personalised experience to each consumer.

Jennifer has more than 20 years in interactive communications and digital marketing. She sits on the National Executive of the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA).

Andrew Apostola and Peter Giles outline typical online revenue generating systems and business models. They touch on direct payment types such as free and chargeable content, and indirect payment types such as pay per click advertising models based on traffic volume and sales results. They discuss various forms of subscription models, one example being micro-payments as used by iTunes with the ‘buy per song’ purchasing system. The info-media model is primarily a data mining model, and consists of on-selling collected data to third parties.
Peter and Andrew provide case studies that demonstrate the packaging of multiple revenue streams and the types of information required to convince advertisers to partner with your online service.

A series of podcasts of short presentations given by mentors at the LAMP VIII residential lab in Marysville, Victoria in February 2008.

All LAMP podcasts are published through iTunes – click on the icon below if you have iTunes to subscribe now!

ANDREW APOSTOLA – Creative Director Portable Content

Andrew Apostola is the co-founder and Creative Director of Portable Content, an Australian based digital studio that designs and manages innovative web applications for a range of clients in the online space.

In 2006 the company successfully launched portablefilmfestival.com, a user generated video site that distributes video to users through portable video platforms including iPods, mobile phones and laptops. In 2007 the project expanded internationally and was recently launched in the United States at the South By South-West Film and Interactive in Austin Texas.

Andrew has worked for a range of broadcasters and media providers and is well known for successfully launching the Student Youth Network alongside Portable Content co-founder Simon Goodich in Melbourne in 2003. The network is the largest youth media orgnanisation in South-East Asia, operating a full-time terrestrial radio license and broadcasting on television and the web.

As Creative Director of Portable Content Andrew follows the emerging online video sector closely and develops and implements innovative video components for the company and its clients. These include the creation of classnet, a video sharing community for educators and students and syn.org.au, an online distribution platform for independent mediamakers.

Andrew has completed a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), a Post Graduate Diploma in English Literature at the University of Melbourne and Film and Television Production at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Peter Giles is the Director of Digital Media at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) where he has established leading postgraduate and professional programs in Computer Animation, Visual Effects, Interactive and Emerging Media. Projects developed in these programs have won major national and international awards for creative excellence.

Peter specializes in developing innovative media education programs that interface directly with industry. He has worked in partnership with companies including MTV, Nickelodeon, ABC, SBS and Fuel TV to deliver advanced courses with real world production outcomes.

Since 2005 Peter has led a national initiative to address skills shortages and knowledge gaps in Australia’s media industries. He has worked with a range of international thought leaders in the emerging media field and established leading programs in the area.

Prior to working at AFTRS Peter established digital media programs at Sydney’s Metro Screen including innovative workshops run with the Loud Youth Festival, IBM, the ABC, SBS TV, the Performance Space, the Australian Centre for Photography and the Australian Network for Art and Technology.

Peter has produced projects for delivery on a wide range of media platforms. He has worked as a radio journalist producing programs for ABC Radio National’s ‘Radio Eye’, ‘Background Briefing’ and ‘Life Matters’ and JJJ’s ‘Morning Show’. He worked in film sound recording and post production for BBC TV and on a wide range of independent projects in the UK and Australia. He has produced interactive media and museum exhibition projects and taught media production courses at the University of Sydney and the University of Technology, Sydney. Peter’s video artwork has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art Art-of-Estimation in Sydney and the Institute of Contemporary Art in London.

Peter is a well known commentator on digital media and has appeared on ABC Television programs including ‘Stateline’ and ‘Mondo Thingo’. He has facilitated and spoken at a wide range of public forums including Popcorn Taxi, the Australian Effects and Animation Festival and the Sydney Film Festival. He is the past Chair of the Sydney Chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH, the leading international computer graphics industry body.

A sadly highly abridged 6 minute recording of a great talk by Jennifer looking at upcoming demo/psycho graphics particularly generation C (12-24) that she thinks stands for community, creativity and content. They are non-watch wearers as they have some many devices who needs it. She looks at their current modes of communication and bizarrely they see email as out-dated and have moved on. Exploring social networks, Jennifer points out the four layers of connection within generation C and how the upper limit of 150 is similar to corporate thresholds of efficiency. She finishes, before being cut off, on explaining why email is an issue for this group.MP3 recording time 6:00 (2.2MB) Click to listen

A series of podcasts of short presentations given by mentors at the LAMP VII: Story of the Future at Couran Cove Eco Resort in December 2007.

JENNIFER WILSON – Head of Innovation, Nine MSN

Jennifer Wilson has over 20 years in interactive consumer content and information services, from first building interactive voice response systems in the UK, through voting, banking, gambling and marketing services; online and on all forms of telephone, fixed and mobile.

She was previously Managing Director of HWW, a specialist content aggregation, syndication and digital publishing company, which provides the yourTime™ products (yourMovies, yourTV etc). HWW is also a major developer of mobile sites, providing mobile publishing tools for hard-to-source content as well as building third-party mobile (and web) sites. HWW was recently purchased by ninemsn.

Jennifer holds a patent in the delivery of TV to mobile phones. She has a keen interest in social networking, digital public spaces, tribes, blogs and forums and the interesting digital world of Gen-C.

ABOUT LAMP PODCASTS

All LAMP podcasts are published through iTunes – click on the icon below if you have iTunes to subscribe now!

This podcast presentation produced and presented by Gary Hayes for LAMP @ AFTRS.

Andrew looks at the nuts and bolts of making money with your content online. He looks at a range of emerging online portals setup to aggregate and share revenues with independent content providers and talks about examples including Revver, Grouper, BlipTV and Crackle. To create a sustainable business you have to connect with interest groups across social networks and existing portals setup to focus a global niche towards your content. “What makes aggregators take notice, audience” leads Andrew to explore that all content put in-front of distributors has to come hand in hand with an existing following. Creative examples investigated are LonelyGirl15, Ask a Ninja, Rocketboom, Afterworld and other notables who were clear about defining their audience and meeting that need. For most content providers nowadays there are two clear paths, sell your audience to a big media group or sell to advertisers who want to reach your audience.MP3 recording time 14:54 (5.2MB) Click to listen

A series of podcasts of short presentations given by mentors at the LAMP VII: Story of the Future at Couran Cove Eco Resort in December 2007.

ANDREW APOSTOLA – Creative Director Portable Content

Andrew Apostola is the co-founder and Creative Director of Portable Content, an Australian based digital studio that designs and manages innovative web applications for a range of clients in the online space.

In 2006 the company successfully launched portablefilmfestival.com, a user generated video site that distributes video to users through portable video platforms including iPods, mobile phones and laptops. In 2007 the project expanded internationally and was recently launched in the United States at the South By South-West Film and Interactive in Austin Texas.

Andrew has worked for a range of broadcasters and media providers and is well known for successfully launching the Student Youth Network alongside Portable Content co-founder Simon Goodich in Melbourne in 2003. The network is the largest youth media orgnanisation in South-East Asia, operating a full-time terrestrial radio license and broadcasting on television and the web.

As Creative Director of Portable Content Andrew follows the emerging online video sector closely and develops and implements innovative video components for the company and its clients. These include the creation of classnet, a video sharing community for educators and students and syn.org.au, an online distribution platform for independent mediamakers.

Andrew has completed a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), a Post Graduate Diploma in English Literature at the University of Melbourne and Film and Television Production at Ryerson University in Toronto.

ABOUT LAMP PODCASTS

All LAMP podcasts are published through iTunes – click on the icon below if you have iTunes to subscribe now!

This podcast presentation produced and presented by Gary Hayes for LAMP @ AFTRS.

John explores the intersection of online games and games communities and highlights key techniques in drawing traffic and communities to your property. He uses Fury developed by Auran games as one example and how the relationships with key influencers were nurtured, using genuine and authentic dialogue and co-creation. He is clear pointing out that the wisdom of crowds of key influencers are the best resource for anyone developing a creative service and you must see them as a market and even consider a transparent commercial relationship. Finally he cites Henry Jenkins and says you must be careful and not treat this community as a free resource, it is very easy for it to be counter productive if not managed properly.MP3 recording time 17:55 (6.2MB) Click to listen

A series of podcasts of short presentations given by mentors at the LAMP VII: Story of the Future at Couran Cove Eco Resort in December 2007.

Dr. JOHN BANKS – Researcher & Games Manager

Dr John Banks is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Federation Fellowship program, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, Queensland University of Technology. His research interests focus on the emerging relations between media corporations, educational and cultural institutions, and user-led innovation and consumer co-creation in participatory culture networks. He has a particular interest in videogames.

From 2000-2005 John worked in the videogames industry for Brisbane based Auran Games as an online community manager, focusing on the development of user-led content creation networks within the context of game development projects; he has published widely on research grounded in this industry background. He was also a researcher and project leader at the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID). His background also includes research and tutoring in literary theory and cultural studies at the University of Queensland (School of English, Media Studies and Art History).

John’s current research & consultancy continues to work at the interface of game developers and gamers as they negotiate emerging co-creation relations. He is currently working with Auran Games on social network strategies for their forthcoming massively multiplayer online game, Fury. In April 2007, John gave an invited presentation to the Convergence Culture Consortium, MIT, addressing the challenges of co-creation relationships (“Navigating Co-Creator Relationships: How do you make this Damned thing Work?”) You can see John’s recent presentation on these issues for AFTRS Centre for Screen BusinessABOUT LAMP PODCASTS

All LAMP podcasts are published through iTunes – click on the icon below if you have iTunes to subscribe now!

This podcast presentation produced and presented by Gary Hayes for LAMP @ AFTRS.

Don’t Just Sit Around this Christmas Holidays –the next LAMP residential is just around the corner

Have you got what it takes to apply?

We are looking for six to eight professional teams with groundbreaking new media ideas to attend our leading R&D production lab from Feb 24 -29, 2008.

Facilitated by the AFTRS, the Laboratory for Advanced Media Production (LAMP) has run hundreds of workshops, seminars and live-in-residentials and developed over 54 projects. LAMP assists production teams in developing innovative emerging media projects including Sharing Web 2.0 Services, Advanced TV, 360 Entertainment, Serious Games and Social Virtual Worlds.

Over our six day LAMP residential, you and internationally recognised industry mentors live and work together in a creative hothouse environment for five days straight.

What a privilege! We were challenged to reach for and achieve
far reaching goals but were also totally supported in the endeavour
by a united team of razor sharp professionals.

You will experience engaging presentations from world class practitioners, evolve the business, technical and creative aspects of your project, and create a dynamic visual proof of concept.

This was a highly productive, intensive session
whereby all outside distractions
were eliminated letting us focus solely on the job

At the end of the residential you are given the opportunity to present your visual proof of concept to a panel of media industry experts, gaining invaluable feedback, insight and advice. Past panels have included representatives from the ABC, Bigpond, NineMSN, yahoo7, SBS, the AFC, Film Victoria, NSWFTO PFTC, Alcatel, Southern Star and Nickelodeon.

I was transformed and uplifted with new confidence,
a new sense of possibility

Our residentials work because participants get to accelerate their ideas rapidly from concept development through to proof of concept while being challenged by a wide range of ideas relevant to the growing creative industries sector.

The next LAMP Residential is being held in collaboration with the New Zealand Screen Council and is set to take place Sun 24 February – Fri 29 February, 2008 in Victoria.

This has definitely been one of the best experiences of my life.
Thankyou!

So get to work today on your application and getting a team together, so you don’t miss out being a part of the first LAMP residential for 2008.

Applications are open now and close on January 10, 2008
Go to www.storylabs.us/lamp/apply to see criteria and download an application form today

We are happy to receive submissions to attend the next lab in the following areas.

Advanced TV – Projects that are targeted to local ‘OpenTV-like’ interactive TV over satellite and cable TV (Foxtel and Sky New Zealand) with a mobile phone component. These can include synchronous enhanced TV alongside the programming, simple casual games or multi stream formats

Social Virtual Worlds – Rich story based virtual worlds that can be built in existing large 3D social multi user environments like Second Life, Multiverse or There.com. These must have a strong community aspect and include co-creative elements.

360 Entertainment – Cross-media, collaborative play services. Often called Extended Entertainment or Alternate Reality Games these will be strong narratives played out across many websites, mobile, physical locations, TV and print. Themes are usually investigative and draw audiences into complex scavenger hunts that blur the line between fact or fiction.

Serious Games – Specifically interested in rich gameplay on consoles, pc or mobile that delivers real learning. The range can be short form flash/sms type games that require brief periods of play spread over many weeks or continuous online games that involve collaboration with others in Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) environments.

Sharing Web 2.0 – Applications and services that draw together communities on web and mobile with the purpose of sharing and growing around a niche interest. This could be mash-ups of iconic web 2.0 services such as flickr, YouTube, Facebook or something completely new and original that will activate key interest groups.